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A Basic SF Library

Created by James Gunn

The first year I offered the Intensive English Institute on the Teaching of Science Fiction, a teacher from Buffalo, New York, asked me how many books a teacher should read in order to have a sound background for the teaching of science fiction. I said, offhand, about a hundred books and gave her a list

prepared by a committee of the Science Fiction Writers of America and published, together with a commentary by Alexei Panshin, in the June 15, 1970, issue of Library Journal. Since then more than 30,000 books have been published and the list is dated. Below is my own list and my own comments. Though based on the original SFWA list, my list has deletions and additions, for the period not only after, but before 1970. An earlier version of this list also was published in Library Journal, November 15, 1988. This list is currently being updated by Chris McKitterick, the CSSF Board of Advisors, and readers of this website. We cannot provide publishing data, for books go in and out of print rapidly and often are reissued by other publishers. Many public libraries will have copies; college libraries with science-fiction collections should have all of them, and many of the titles are available in Easton Press's Masterpieces of Science Fiction collector's editions, which used the 1988 list as a basis for its selections. For current information on availability, the best sources are Books in Print and Paperback Books in Print, as well as the various online book dealers. Because many of these books are getting difficult to find, we have also added links to where you can find these books available for sale online. Just click the underlined book titles to go to an online bookseller offering new or used editions. If you have read books by all the authors listed below, you have a solid acquaintance with the foundational and important novels of science fiction. Naturally, people differ in their definition of which books are important or have had a greater impact on the genre. This list will continue to grow as we receive more recommendations for what various scholars consider "important." At some point it will become difficult to read all the works listed here! However, well-read SF readers should be familiar with all of the authors listed below. We provide this list as a resource for librarians and other scholars looking for a basis for what constitutes consensus. We hope you find it useful!

ADAMS, Douglas. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[Amazon | Powell's] (1979) springboarded from the popular radio and television series into a series of best-selling comic send-ups of SF and society for this British author. In 2005, made into a popular movie.

BROWN, Fredric. What Mad Universe (1949) [Amazon | Powell's]. Hard-boiled mystery writer Fred Brown was also a talented SF writer, particularly at the shorter lengths. This is his amusing parallel-world story about the imagination of a science-fiction fan. Other books of interest: The Lights in the Sky Are Stars (1953); andMartians, Go Home (1955) [Amazon | Powell's].

BURROUGHS, Edgar Rice. A Princess of Mars, (1912) [Amazon | Powell's]. The first novel by this prolific adventure writer, best known for hisTarzan stories but best liked by fantasy and SF readers for his eleven-volume Martian series and his seven-volumePellucidar series; this is the first, the most typical, and possibly the best of the Martian series.

CADIGAN, Pat. Synners[Amazon | Powell's] won the 1989 Arthur C. Clarke Award,Fools won the 1994 award for this author who won her first acclaim as the only female cyberpunk author at the time; soon after considered the "Queen of Cyberpunk." Patterns (1988) [Amazon | Powell's] was her first major collection of short works, andMindplayers (1987) [Amazon | Powell's] was her breakout novel.

CAMPBELL, John W. The Best of John W. Campbell(1976) [Amazon | Powell's].Influential, longtime editor of Astounding/Analog, Campbell began as a writer of space epics and then turned to writing the more subtle psychological, philosophical stories collected here.

CHERRYH, C. J. Downbelow Station[Amazon | Powell's]. Hugo, 1982. This former high school Latin teacher writes about carefully designed future civilizations and alien societies, as well as fantasy novels, such as her Rusalka trilogy.

CLEMENT, Hal. Mission of Gravity[Amazon | Powell's] (1954). A basic, hard-science novel about a planet on which the gravity is several hundred times that on Earth, diminishing to only two or three times Earth’s gravity at the equator, and the efforts of caterpillar- like natives to adapt to different conditions. Clement (real name Harry Stubbs) was a high-school general-science teacher. Other books of interest: Needle (1950) [Amazon | Powell's]; Iceworld (1953) [Amazon | Powell's].

CONKLIN, Groff, ed. The Best of Science Fiction, 1946. One of the two influential postwar anthologies. Conklin was a major anthologist, and all of his collections are valuable.

DE CAMP, L. Sprague. Lest Darkness Fall(1941) [Amazon | Powell's]. A contemporary man thrown back in time to 6th century Rome tries to stave off the Dark Ages by introducing modern technology and organization. The Complete Enchanter (1975) [Amazon | Powell's], whose parts date back to 1940 and 1941, written with Fletcher Pratt, contains amusing fantasies about modern man transported to mythological worlds. DeCamp also has worked extensively in the heroic fantasy tradition of Conan and in his own heroic fantasy worlds.

DICKSON, Gordon R. Three to Dorsai (1975) [Amazon | Powell's]. Dickson, a prolific author of science fiction on various themes, is involved in writing a multi-volume series chronicling an evolutionary development in the human race; these are the three novels in this ChildeCycle[Amazon | Powell's] dating back to 1959.

HAGGARD, H. Rider. She[Amazon | Powell's] 1887. One of the earliest and best of the lost-race novels that were almost a genre in themselves in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

HALDEMAN, Joe. The Forever War[Amazon | Powell's]. An episodic novel of a centuries-long war between aliens and humans fought in space, with ships going faster-than-light and compressing subjective time, focusing on what happens to two soldiers, male and female, caught up in the war. Nebula & Hugo, 1976. The Hemingway Hoax[Amazon | Powell's] (1990)won a Nebula in its novella version.ForeverPeace[Amazon | Powell's] won the 1998 Campbell and Nebula Awards.

HUXLEY, Aldous. Brave New World[Amazon | Powell's] (1932). A classic anti-utopia about people created on an assembly-line and their automated lives.

KEYES, Daniel. Flowers for Algernon[Amazon | Powell's]. This study of a mentally retarded man who becomes a genius through an operation and then regresses to his previous condition won a Hugo in 1960 as a novelette and a Nebula in 1966 as a novel.

KNIGHT, Damon, ed. The Best of Damon Knight[Amazon | Powell's](1976). Knight may be best known as a pioneer critic who became an anthologist and editor, particularly of the original anthology Orbit, but he was the author of great short fiction. Recent novels include hisCV utopian trilogy and Why Do Birds?[Amazon | Powell's](1992).

KRESS, Nancy. Beggars in Spain[Amazon | Powell's] (1992) is an expanded version of the novella that won a Nebula for 1991.The capstone novel of her Probability series, ProbabilitySpace[Amazon | Powell's], won the 2003 Campbell Award. She won the 1997 Sturgeon and Nebula Awards with the novelette, "The Flowers of Aulit Prison."

KUTTNER, Henry. Fury[Amazon | Powell's] (1950).An angry man pushes humanity out of the comfortable underwater Keeps on Venus onto the ravening land. Kuttner and his wife, C. L. Moore, herself a distinguished science-fiction author, collaborated under a variety of pen names, which included Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O'Donnell. They were particularly effective at the shorter lengths, as illustrated inThe Best of Henry Kuttner[Amazon | Powell's] and The Best of C. L. Moore[Amazon | Powell's] (both 1975).

LEIBER, Fritz. Conjure Wife[Amazon | Powell's] (1953). Leiber was a long-time author of science fiction and fantasy, and is particularly noted for his heroic fantasy about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser; this is unheroic fantasy involves a wife who learns that witchcraft is being practiced on a quiet college campus and learns to do it herself in self-defense. Other books of interest: The Big Time[Amazon | Powell's] Hugo,1958; TheWanderer[Amazon | Powell's] Hugo, 1965.

LEM, Stanislaw. TheCyberiad[Amazon | Powell's] Polish 1967, English 1974.Subtitled "Fables for the Cybernetic Age," The Cyberiad wittily describes the predicaments of two robot inventors in a robotic galaxy. One of the most famous science-fiction writers in Europe, Lem has written a number of significant novels(Solaris[Amazon | Powell's] 1970) and story collections (Mortal Engines[Amazon | Powell's] 1977) distinguished by wit, complexity, and style.

LINK, Kelly. Won the World Fantasy Award for the story, "The Specialist's Hat" (1999). Her short work was collected inStranger Things Happen[Amazon | Powell's] (2001). Also a frequent anthology editor.

LOVECRAFT, H. P. The Shadow over Innsmouth (1936). A short novel that introduces the reader, like the unsuspecting narrator, to the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos that Lovecraft and his followers celebrated in dozens of short stories. This piece is available in The Dunwich Horror and Others[Amazon | Powell's].

McINTYRE, Vonda N. Dreamsnake[Amazon | Powell's] (1978), about a young woman who heals by the use of biological medicines produced by snakes in a post-holocaust world, won a Nebula and a Hugo, as its novelette predecessor had won the Nebula five years earlier. Her novel, The Moon and the Sun[Amazon | Powell's], won the 1997 Nebula.

MILLER, Walter M., Jr. A Canticle for Leibowitz[Amazon | Powell's]. After anatomic war, a monastic order preserves blueprints and technological artifacts, and civilization is rebuilt over 1,800 years. Hugo, 1961.

MORGAN, Richard. His brilliant cautionary tale, Market Forces[Amazon | Powell's] (2004), which won the 2005 Campbell Award, is an indictment of the contemporary political-corporate culture and an homage to Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth's The Space Merchants[Amazon | Powell's]. Beyond mere satire or dressing up current political affairs in the clothing of corporations, it's a projection of the core-SF theme of, "if this goes on..."

NORTON, Andre. Star Man’s Son[Amazon | Powell's] (1952). The first of a long series of romantic juveniles popular with young readers and adults as well. Norton is even better known for her fantasy novels, particularly her Witch World sequence.

ORWELL, George. NineteenEighty-four[Amazon | Powell's] (1949). A famous anti-utopian novel about total psychological and political control, even of history and language, in the near future (now the past).AnimalFarm[Amazon | Powell's] (1945) about communism treated as a farmyard fable.

PANSHIN, Alexei. Rite of Passage[Amazon | Powell's]. A girl comes of age aboard a self-sufficient spaceship and in its specialized community. Nebula, 1968.

ROBINSON, Frank. The Glass Inferno[Amazon | Powell's] (1975) was the first of Robinson’s best-selling disaster novels with the late Thomas N. Scortia and was filmed (along with Richard Martin Stern's The Tower) as The Towering Inferno. Robinson's earlier solo novel, also filmed, was The Power[Amazon | Powell's] (1956).

SMITH, Edward E. GrayLensman[Amazon | Powell's] (1951). E. E. Smith, Ph.D., called Doc Smith by a generation of fans, wrote great, sprawling space epics; this is a good sample involving a galactic battle between good and evil. There are five more volumes in theLensman series, four novels in the Skylark series.

STAPLEDON, Olaf. Last and First Men[Amazon | Powell's] (1930). An English philosopher describes the next two billion years in the future of mankind--or seventeen different kinds of men, from First to Last.The Star Maker[Amazon | Powell's](1937), is even more visionary, traversing the whole universe and the whole history of creation; Odd John (1935) [Amazon | Powell's], on the other hand, is an intimate description of the birth and development of a superman, and one of the best.

STEWART, George R. EarthAbides[Amazon | Powell's]. Many non-science-fiction writers have written ineptly when they ventured into the field; a few have done well. This careful narrative of survival after a worldwide plague has decimated humanity and destroyed most of civilization is excellent. International Fantasy Award, 1951.

WOLFE, Gene. The Book of the New Sun tetralogy, beginning withThe Shadow of the Torturer[Amazon | Powell's] (1980). Four long novels (with a fifth added later), that are really one very long novel, about the wanderings of a young torturer through a strange future world. Novels in the series have won, variously, the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, and the Campbell Award. Other books of interest: a newLong Sun series began with Nightside the Long Sun[Amazon | Powell's] (1993).